RFK’s False Cure
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. insists America is “the sickest country in the world.” It’s a dramatic line—one designed to justify his purge of CDC scientists. But like much of his rhetoric, it misses the truth and mangles the remedy.
Are We the Sickest?
America is sick, yes—but not in the way he claims. We lead wealthy nations in rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, gun deaths, and opioid overdoses. Our life expectancy lags behind our peers, not because we’re plagued by malaria or cholera, but because we’re drowning in preventable chronic illness and social pathologies.
We are sick from:
Food deserts that leave millions without access to healthy food.
Gun violence that kills more Americans annually than car crashes.
Fentanyl and opioids that take nearly 100,000 lives a year.
Gaps in health care—tens of millions uninsured or underinsured.
Fragmented elder care, where Medicare and Medicaid leave seniors vulnerable and struggling.
That is our diagnosis.
What Could Be Done?
If Kennedy truly cared about the health of this nation, he might have advocated for:
Universal health care to ensure no one falls through the cracks.
Expanding Medicare and Medicaid so our seniors and vulnerable populations aren’t rationing medicine.
Nutrition policy reform to eliminate food deserts and support healthy, affordable diets.
Common-sense gun control to reduce needless deaths and injuries.
Naloxone availability in every community to stem the tide of overdose deaths.
Ending the Dickey Amendment, which for decades handcuffed the CDC from studying gun violence—one of the leading causes of childhood death in America. But did RFK Jr scold the Congress for not retracting that?
That would have been real leadership. Instead, Kennedy chose spectacle.
Why the CDC Matters
Instead of fixing root causes, Kennedy fired CDC scientists. The very people who led the charge against Ebola, who helped develop a rapid Ebola vaccine, and who—had they been allowed to remain in Wuhan—might have slowed the COVID-19 catastrophe.
When Ebola exploded in West Africa, the world expected it to hit American shores. Who was called? The CDC. They set up hospitals in Africa. They trained and equipped American hospitals to safely contain Ebola cases. Because of that, the outbreak never became a domestic catastrophe. The CDC was the thin line between panic and prevention.
And here’s the deeper danger: when you fire scientists, they do not sit around waiting to be re-employed. They leave. They take their expertise to other institutions, other countries, and we lose them forever. All because one man’s ideology—not evidence—tells him to purge them.
This is the moral equivalent of burning books because you don’t like the ideas inside.
And it ignores what the CDC has achieved:
In much of the world, tuberculosis remains the leading infectious disease killer. In the U.S., TB deaths are rare—because of CDC surveillance and treatment programs.
Worldwide, malaria kills the equivalent of two fully loaded 747s of children every day. In the U.S., malaria is so rare that every case must be reported to the CDC.
If smallpox ever resurfaces—say someone unseals the vials still held in Russia—who will protect us? With our scientists scattered, the world becomes more dangerous.
And the threat isn’t hypothetical. Avian influenza (bird flu) continues to spread. If it adapts to human-to-human transmission, the very CDC field agents we just lost would have been our first and best line of defense.
To declare America “the sickest nation” is to dismiss these triumphs. It is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The Real Sickness
Kennedy claims America is the sickest nation, but he ignores the causes—and demolishes the defenses we do have. He blames the CDC for problems outside its purview, while undermining the science that saves lives.
He rails against aluminum, despite a study of 1.2 million people showing no link between aluminum exposure and the diseases he imagines. Instead of accepting the evidence, he demanded the journal retract the study. That isn’t science—it’s zealotry.
Vaccines do not cause autism. The evidence is overwhelming. Yet he clings to that falsehood, demanding retractions of science that doesn’t flatter his worldview.
Final Word
America faces a health crisis. But dismantling the CDC, spreading vaccine myths, and silencing scientists is no cure. It is malpractice on a national scale.
If we want a healthier nation, we don’t need fewer scientists—we need fewer demagogues.
Thanks to my paid subscribers who make these messages possible. As a virologist and physician, my job is to stand up against demagoguery and stand for public health.